The Book of Revelation: Expository Commentary from Sermons by Dr Peter Masters

Bible Commentary on The Revelation of St. John the Divine

by Dr Peter Masters, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (adapted from sermons) with content from Bible Notes

John, the author of this book was known to all his readers and especially to the seven churches in Asia, so that no further identification is necessary. There is only one John in the New Testament church to whom this could apply, the disciple of the Lord, the apostle John, the author of John’s Gospel. John, the elder, the writer of 2 John, and 3 John, is not a separate person, but the same apostle. This is the John of whom Christ asked Peter, ‘If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?’ (John 21:23) Tradition speaks of John living to a great age at Ephesus and therefore being especially well known to the churches of that area. To whom would he more naturally write than to those from whom he had been taken away and placed on Patmos for preaching the word of God? The earliest authorities attribute this book to John the apostle, and the book is commonly dated around AD 95, during a time of persecution under Domitian.

What is this last book of the Bible? It is ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ’: not so much the revelation of John, although it was delivered to the church through this apostle, but the revelation of Christ himself to his church. The word ‘revelation’ comes from the Latin word meaning unveiling. The Greek word is very similar: the uncovering, the unveiling, the disclosing of something not previously clearly known.

There are at least three great secrets revealed in the New Testament. There is the mystery of the gospel – what is the gospel, the gospel of Christ? That is not what is meant here when it refers to the revelation of Jesus Christ. The gospel is indeed the revelation of Jesus Christ. Admittedly, to a great extent, it could be known by the faithful in Old Testament times, but not fully and precisely. Believers in olden times could understand clearly enough to see their need of salvation, and repent before God, and trust in his mercy. They could see that the great sacrifice would come, and that God would take away sin for all those who are his. They could understand that they must come by faith to God, but they didn’t fully understand how this would be done. Think of the disciples. Right up to the crucifixion of Christ, they were still harbouring the illusion that Christ would turn out to be a political emancipator and deliverer of their nation. They still hadn’t grasped it fully. To us it is amazing. We look back at some of the prophecies such as that very famous prophecy of Isaiah 53, and with hindsight and in the light of New Testament revelation we say, ‘The atoning death of Christ is so clear in that great prophecy. Why couldn’t they all fully see it?’ But it was not so clear at the time. Some of the elements could be seen, but not the how – how it would be done, how Messiah would take away sin.

Secondly, there is the mystery of the gathering in of the Gentiles. That too was revealed – how the church would be formed and composed of believing Jews, and that Gentiles would also be gathered in, and would be fellow heirs with Jewish believers, on the same footing, not as second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. We can say that Christ himself, by his suffering and death, opened up the first secret, and to a great extent the second secret – that secret would be fully opened by the apostle Paul. So these two great secrets of the gospel were dispersed by a tremendous burst of New Testament light.

But there is a third secret, and this is the subject of the Book of Revelation. This third secret is the understanding given to the church of the last age. It is the plan of God, particularly for the church in the last age of the world. What is happening in that age? Is the church going to conquer the world spiritually, or totally? Says the Book of Revelation, No, it isn’t. What is going to happen? What will be the circumstances under which the gospel is preached? Well, says the Book of Revelation, it will be one of constant tribulation. There will be a tremendous spiritual warfare between the world and the church. It will always be, until the very end, and it will end with the great triumph of Christ and the triumph of the gospel and the day of judgement.

The last age includes the entire period that stretches between the first coming of Christ – his incarnation, his suffering and death on Calvary’s cross, his resurrection from the dead, and the founding of the New Testament church in a more formal way on the day of Pentecost – and his return at the end of the world, winding up of the present age and bringing in the last great eternal age. This is the period of time, between the two comings of Christ, that the Book of Revelation deals with throughout. It is given to reveal what God will allow, and what he will determine and decree. It shows how he will inspire, strengthen, and equip his people, his church, and what he will do in the world through them. It explains how he will defend them and help them, and how they will be permitted to suffer great hostility and persecution, but in the end they will triumph with the coming of Christ and the establishing of eternal things. As a result of this unveiling, Christians living in the last stage of the earth will know why things are as they are. Without explaining every event in detail, the Book of Revelation shows in general terms what is the pattern of events in this last age of earth’s history. Why does God permit so much? What is this great spiritual warfare and all the hostility that we encounter? What is the purpose of God and how will it be brought to a close at the end?

Some glimpses of this present age are in the Old Testament. In the great prophecy of Isaiah many things are said about this age, and how the church will fare. But it is a very small amount of information by comparison with this flood of data in the Book of Revelation. This is the unveiling, the uncovering. If we don’t read and understand correctly the Book of Revelation, we miss so much. We lack perspective; we are constantly confused. The Book of Revelations is for our comfort and understanding, to hold us, and to keep our heads up and looking forward.

Many find this a difficult book to understand and there are a variety of different ways of interpreting it. We need to ask certain questions about the book. First of all, is it literal or symbolic? What does John see? Are these visions which he reports his best attempt to describe glimpses he is given of literal future events? It would then be as if he was transported into the future in a time machine and was reporting what he saw with his own physical eyes, but had difficulty making sense of. Does his ignorance of future events cause him to do his best to describe them in terms that he is already familiar with, but which fail to really do justice to what he is seeing? Should the interpreter who lives closer to the time of fulfilment reinterpret what John reports in terms of contemporary realities which he understands better? That is the literal approach to the book.

Alternatively, are we being given pictures and figures which are not intended to describe things literally, but which use picture and symbols? The evidence for the book being symbolic is found right from the beginning. In chapter 1 Christ says to John, ‘The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches’ (Revelation 1:20). Two symbols are explained, and we are alerted that we are dealing with a book in which the visions represent something else in reality. The Lord Jesus is himself presented in ways that cannot be literal. ‘And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. ¹⁴ His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; ¹⁵ And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength’ (Revelation 1:13-16). In the trinitarian greeting which John is to send to the seven churches, the Holy Spirit is described as ‘the seven Spirits which are before his throne’ (Revelation 1:4). Both the elements found in visions and the use of numbers are going to be symbolic throughout the book. Some try to interpret Revelation by switching backwards and forwards between a symbolic and a literal mode of interpretation, but that simply causes confusion, and we ought to be consistent.

This use of spiritual pictures is not difficult for those who are conversant with the language of prophecy which relies heavily on earthly pictures of spiritual truths. The people and the entities described – the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, the local churches, the worship of God, the prayers of offered up to God, Satan and his persecution of God’s people, the interim judgments of unbelief in the world, the final judgment and the events leading up to it, and many other things; they are of course all real entities, but they are described in symbolic terms. The use of symbols should not be something strange to those who know the Old Testament. God gave his people a complete system of symbolic worship in the ceremonial law which pointed to spiritual realities, and the prophets often used the language of symbols to foretell New Testament realities. Those who understood what that meant realised that they were living in the age of types and shadows and that ‘the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect’ (Hebrews 10:1). The majority of symbols in the Book of Revelation are found in the Old Testament, and the rest can be derived from them in a straightforward way. Nor is there any need for arbitrary assignment of meaning in interpreting them. In fact, the book is best understood by those who are very familiar with the Old Testament, since it brings together a mass of these different images and combines them into a New Testament picture. Why does God teach the church by means of Old Testament symbols now that we are in the age of truth? To show the connectedness of Old and New Testaments and to help explain spiritual realities. Even now we go back to the Old Testament and study its symbols because they shed so much light on our age. It is a book for believers – only they can understand it. Furthermore, we still have need of symbols, because at present we see through a glass darkly. The wonders of heaven are still beyond our understanding, and so God must teach us as children who need earthly pictures to illustrate heavenly realities.

Another important question is this: does the Book of Revelation give us history in advance, or is it something else? We might be convinced that it is a book of symbols, and yet we could still ask, are these symbols referring to specific events in history at particular times and in particular places? As we work through the book, does it follow a chronological sequence so that, if we know where we are, we can recognize our own point in history as it is described in God’s timetable? Some have treated it in that way. They have tried to relate the visions to certain well known and significant historical landmarks, as if God wants us to recognise events as they occur to assure us that his plan is still on track. But the attempt to read the book in this way causes great interpretative difficulties, and means that large sections of the book are irrelevant to believers not living in the times which are addressed.

Among those who treat Revelation as history given in advance are some who limit that history to certain periods of time. The Preterist view of the book teaches that it was fulfilled in the years following shortly after John wrote it. It was given to help the church through a particularly severe persecution experienced by the early church. That again makes the book apply only to those living at a certain time, whereas the blessing with which the book opens pronounces a blessing on all who read it at all times (Revelation 1:3). Another view relegates the book to the very closing years of earth’s history. The Futurist view applies the majority of the book (especially from chapter 4 onwards) to the last seven years before the return of Christ.

Does the book instead give us an idealised view of what will take place during the gospel age? Does it show us patterns which occur again and again, rather than a chronological sequence of events? If the book is treated as a chart of future historical events, the mapping of visions to particular events soon becomes arbitrary, but if what it gives us is a series of idealised pictures which represent repeating pattern in our experience, then we are given great insight into what God is doing in the world. Understood in that way, the whole of the book is relevant to all Christians living in all ages and all places.

A related question is this: Is the book focused on spiritual realities, or on the goings on in the physical world? Certainly the church is composed of human beings living in the physical world, and the outworking of the visions involves events that affect our bodies as well as our souls, but the book is more focused on the spiritual conflict in which all believers are engaged, ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’ (Ephesians 6:12).

One chapter has had a disproportionate influence on the interpretation of the whole book. Revelation 20 describes the thousand-year reign of Christ, known as the millennium. During that time Satan is bound and cast into the bottomless pit and only released after the thousand years are ended. There are three different interpretations of the millennium – amillennialism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism. They have a major effect on the understanding of eschatology, the doctrine of the last times and the events which take place. Two of the views understand the millennium to be a literal thousand-year period of earth’s history. They differ in that premillennialism believes that Christ will return ‘pre’ [before] the start of the thousand years, while postmillennialism believes he will return ‘post’ [after] the thousand years. Amillennialism on the other hand does not treat the thousand years as a literal period of time at all. Instead it sees it as a symbolic period which corresponds to the entire gospel age – the period from the first coming of Christ to the second coming. (This will be explained more carefully when we come to chapter 20.) This is more in line with an interpretation of the book that understands all numbers to be symbolic. There is no reason why chapter 20 should be any different in this respect. Furthermore premillennialism and postmillennialism treat the book in a more chronological way, so that when they come to chapter 20, they understand it to be speaking of a distinct period of time. For reasons to do with the cyclic structure of the book (explained below) amillennialism is ready to see the vision in chapter 20 as simply one more perspective on the gospel age, and therefore not following in chronological sequence after earlier chapters.

Another extremely important consideration is the structure of the book. William Hendriksen has some very helpful principles to guide our interpretation of the book. Without understanding this, it will be hard to follow from a chronological point of view. As your read through the Book of Revelation, you come to a passage where you say, ‘This is about the end of the world. I can clearly see that I am reading about the final judgment or the second coming’, and yet immediately afterwards you read a passage which seems to have gone back in time and you find believers on earth all over again. Did you really understand correctly when you thought you were reading about the end of time? An example of this is Revelation 11:15-18. That seems to bring us to the judgment of the world, but then the next chapter brings us back again to the birth of Christ. The same happens in Revelation 14:18-20, and yet chapters 15 and 16 tell us about the seven plagues during which human beings are living on earth once again, and judgments are being delivered which evidently precede the final judgment. How do we make sense of this? Is there no chronology to the book? To say that the book does not present us with history told in advance is not to say that it muddles the order of the great events in the history of redemption. The return of Christ, the end of the world, and the Day of Judgment must come last, and yet there is this problem. William Hendriksen explains that this confusion arises when we do not see the plan of the book. Revelation is divided into seven sections, but each of these sections covers the same period of time – the gospel age, the church age. We can think of them as seven different perspectives on the time between the first and second coming of Christ. At the end of each section, the next section returns to the beginning of the gospel age all over again. Thus the book jumps back in time and we are given a fresh look at this period of history in which we are living. Although he admits that different people divide the book in different places, he suggests the following divisions: Section 1: Christ in the midst of the seven golden lampstands (1-3); Section 2: The book with seven seals (4-7); Section 3: The seven trumpets of judgment (8-11); Section 4: The woman and the Man-child persecuted by the dragon and his helpers (the beast and the harlot|) (12-14); Section 5: The seven bowls of wrath (15, 16); Section 6: The fall of the great harlot and of the beast (17-19); Section 7: The judgment upon the dragon (Satan) followed by the new heaven and earth, new Jerusalem (20-22). These notes will follow the same divisions apart from moving chapter 7 into section 3.

If someone were to write a geography book about the United Kingdom, presumably they would divide it up into sections or chapters. There would be a section on the physical geography, the terrain, the land where the hills and mountains are and the valleys, and it would focus on those physical features of the land. Then you would get another section which would deal with economic matters, where the industries are, how they are spread, what people do in different areas, and you would find a different aspect, a different self-contained topic of interest. Each section would deal with the whole of the United Kingdom from a particular point of view, and that is what is going on in the Book of Revelation: seven scans of history, each looking at the affairs on the earth from a different point of view.

But Hendriksen goes further. He says there is a development of thought as we move from one section to another. They are not all of the same character. In his book, ‘More than Conquerors’, he gives the following propositions:

Proposition I. The book of Revelation consists of seven sections. They are parallel and each spans the entire new dispensation, from the first to the second coming of Christ.

Proposition II. The seven sections may be grouped into two major divisions. The first major division (chapters 1-11) consists of three sections. The second major division (chapters 12-22) consists of four sections. The two major divisions reveal a progress in depth or intensity of spiritual conflict. The first major division (chapters 1-11) reveals the Church, indwelt by Christ, persecuted by the world. But the Church is avenged, protected and victorious. The second major division (chapters 12-22) reveals the deeper spiritual background of this struggle. It is a conflict between Christ and the dragon in which Christ, and therefore the Church, is victorious.

Proposition III. The book is one. The principles of human conduct and divine moral government are progressively revealed; the lampstands give rise to the seals, the seals to the trumpets, etc.

Proposition IV. The seven sections of the Apocalypse are arranged in ascending, climactic order. There is progress in eschatological emphasis. The final judgment is first announced, then introduced, then described. Similarly, the new heaven and earth are described more fully in the final section than in those that precede it.

Proposition V. The fabric of the book consists of moving pictures. The details that pertain to the picture should be interpreted in harmony with its central thought. We should ask two questions. First, what is the entire picture? Second, what is its predominant idea?

Proposition VI. The seals, trumpets, bowls of wrath, and similar symbols refer not to specific events, particular happenings, or details of history, but to principles – of human conduct and of divine moral government – that are operating throughout the history of the world, especially throughout the new dispensation.